Nothing Alexandre could find anything wrong with.
Certainly not snooping around his study
Part of me hopes that the drawers of his desk, the first place I think to look, will be locked. But of course, they’re not. Alexandre seems to be a man who doesn’t try too hard to safeguard his secrets—or maybe he simply is so isolated from others that there’s no one to find them. It would explain why he’s close to Yvette, if she’s his only friend. If it’s just her—and me.
The thought makes me sad, somehow, and guiltier.What if there’s nothing? What if he’s just the eccentric rich Frenchman that you thought he was, and you’re almost all he has? And you’re betraying his trust?
Alexandre paid too much for you.
Mind your manners.
The memory of his voice, hissing that at me in the hallway as he’d held me up against the wall, pushes some of the guilt back. I’d seen a hint of something different in him then, just like the night I’d refused to tell him about my feet in the bath, and he’d gotten angry with me.
Something that maybe, just maybe, I need to watch out for.
The first two drawers don’t have anything interesting. Some old papers, spreadsheets, nothing that gives me any clue as to what he might have paid for me or that mean anything to me at all. But then, as I start in on one of the heavy wooden drawers on the left side of the desk, I come across something halfway through a stack of papers that makes my heart stop.
Alexei Egorov.
For a moment, I want to shove it back into the drawer without looking at it.Maybe it’s better not to know.It had felt good, that one moment early on when I’d believed Alexandre had paid nothing for me, that Alexei had just pawned me off for whatever he could get, and that maybe there was something wholesome in what Alexandre had done, in a weird sort of way. Seeing the damaged and broken things around his apartment that first afternoon had made me wonder if it could be true.
But then Yvette had gone and fucked it up with just a few well-placed words.
She did it on purpose. And you’re playing right into her hands.
I stand there for too long, holding the paper. I can’t decide. If I don’t look at it, I’ll wonder forever, now that I know. But if I do, I’m doing what she wants. I’ll discover something that will drive a wedge between Alexandre and I. And if he finds out—
I pace around from behind the desk, my heart hammering, the paper still clutched in my hand. I stop in front of the fireplace, the insane idea to light it and burn the paper before I can read it springing into my head.
But I look down at it. I can’t stop myself. In the dim light, I make out my name and a number that I can’t make sense of at first. There are too many zeroes. No number should have that many zeroes after it. It’s impossible.
How much did he pay for me? A hundred thousand? No, too many zeroes. A fuckingmillion?
But it’s still not right. And I realize as I read it again and again, with a sort of dizzying disbelief that makes me feel as if I’m going to pass out, that Alexandre paid ahundred million dollarsfor me.
Forme, a twenty-one-year-old damaged ballerina with no future, no name, and a wrecked mind. A girl prone to fits and panic attacks, who can barely stand up for an entire day, who certainly would melt down if forced into anything sexual. A girl who Alexei had clearly said, out loud, before the party, was worthless except to the kind of man who would enjoy a girl who couldn’t run.
The kind of man who would enjoy helplessness. Begging. A girl he could torment and watch her try to get away, like a butterfly with her wings pinned down. The worst kind of sadist.
That doesn’t seem like Alexandre. I can’t make it fit in my mind.
I knew he was rich, butthatrich?
Alexandre paid too much for you.
For once, I agree with Yvette.
I stare at the paper, reading it over and over, as if it might change. As if it’s a trick of the light, some magic ink that will melt away, revealing that it’s a hoax. A joke.
That he really paid a hundred dollars. A thousand, even. Ten thousand.
Not ahundred million.
But it doesn’t change. And I stare at it so long, lost in the whirling thoughts in my head and my fevered imagination, that I don’t hear the key in the door or the footsteps in the hall or the smooth swing of the study door opening up. I don’t hear anything at all, until a heavy, long-fingered hand grips my shoulder painfully, and I hear Alexandre’s voice say my name in a tone he’s never used before. That chills me to the depths of my soul.
“Anastasia.”